Really loved what you did to sync this to the music! Fantastic and refreshingly new aproach at the 4k category. I'm not familiar with all the tech going on underneath, but the visuals realle stands out as something I've never seen before. You manage to create this really tight connection with the audio and even though it sometimes becomes obvious what constraints where being met with the soundtrack, I've yet to see a better and tighter integration. Instruments were all really interesting and I'd say it's hard to put a finger on where you could have spent an extra byte or two. The production really comes across as whole and extremely well polished and most importantly: Well thought through. Massive props for bringing this shiny gem to us, and what a truly amazing compo to be in. I'd be surprised if this doesn't win, but on the other hand - there's really a lot of fantastic entries. So this will be the comment I'll regret for a loooong time, since I write it before the prize ceremony, but if this wins or not, doesn't really change my feedback and input ;)

the geometry is *really* simple meaning you can trace a shitload of rays without doing anything special (so doesn't take too much space either), so I'm not that impressed by the technical side. But the music and direction, oh, the direction!

Holy fuck :D Simple scenes, but that glitchy lighting and sync makes it work fine, and the audio is amazing. And it all fits together perfectly. Think this might take over from CDAK as my favourite 4K.

btw, stops here after a second of rendering on nvidia 860m, while it's "working" on intel with a funny blue triangle in the upper left corner. (on the 970 it's working, but still too slow to be enjoyable with the pace it has)

Several comments regarding the fact that it might not be that technically impressive... Maybe it's not, but I do see this category becoming something where design, production and direction are just as important. In this respect, this is superb; it's still a hell of a lot of talent and beauty in 4K! :)

wooohoow, excellent.
i love it, when design, direction and music melt together to creat a original atmosphere - and that in a 4k!
the music reminds me of this (which is a good thing) - esp. these high percussions and the pads in the background.

Meh. A sphere and a box, some "artsy" design, editing with choppy movements and flashes to hide all the ugly path tracing noise. Well i'm going to view it again later, maybe it'll grow on me. Piggy for now.

Imagination Tech should release some time soon a 120W raytracing card that should do something over 6 billion rays per pixel per second (about 48 times faster than a single 1080 gtx).

An era of everything being path-traced is upon us... bye bye all of the crazy, elegant and crazy hacks that took some mayor skills ranging from radiosity, shadow maps, screen space trash, post-process dof, voxel cone whatever and etc etc :(

I'd have bet money on this winning the compo. Amazing and bloody intense, hands down my favourite demoscene production of the year so far. One of the best intro soundtracks I've ever heard too - nothing in it screams "this is a softsynth in a 4k" :)

I can't believe this didn't win! (and I even mis-read the results screen because I was so sure that it would get to #1...). But still, getting to #2 is a great achievement in this very tough compo, and I think this demo can pretty much be considered a major breakthrough in the world of 4k's.

This was basically a thing waiting to happen: a local optimum in the space of possible 4Ks, defined by that exact gritty-but-ultrarealistic look on trivial geometry, fast-changing illumination, and music to go with both. This is obvious to me now, but wasn't before.
The rendering technique chosen (path tracing) can produce a simulation of indirect lighting, but with ridiculous amounts of noise unless the image is allowed to converge for a long time by adding more samples per pixel. BUT if you take really simple geometry (like a cube and a sphere) you can do all ray intersections in closed form and get quite a few samples within the realtime time budget. This was where I stopped thinking about it, because obviously that would be boring spheres over checkerboards (and still somewhat noisy), right? Nope: if you present it in a way that embraces the remaining noise, then things start to come together. All that it needs for this to work is fast animation of the lighting to both distract from the noise and to make it the light interesting (check.), music that supports this look (check. holy crap, the music.), and a way to pull everything together with good pacing and image composition, doing everything it can to present the trivial geometry in a way that stays interesting (CHECK). If you had failed in just one of those, it might have been an interesting 4k, but not a great one - and it would still have wasted the idea. For this to work, form and function absolutely have to come together in exactly this way and I am thankful you pulled this off.

I can image you sitting there and thinking "this is so obvious, probably everyone else is doing just this right now, let's finish FAST" :)

While being awesome in the compo it was clearly less so in the hall on youtube/laptop speakers afterwards. However, back home with proper sound and realtime it just rules again. The unfiltered noise (too bad, youtubers!) just works wonders for the concept, and overall it becomes one of the very few 4ks where the technical concept hits bulls eye and you don't feel it's being limited by being a 4k.

Btw, it really begs for high framerate, and is quite heavy (720p runs 33fps on my 390) - maybe we could get a version with fewer samples? (and a 60hz youtube) (in fact I already started dissecting the shader looking for easy gains ;))

Cupe's reasoning is pretty much spot on (except I obviously don't take a position on how this ranks among other 4k intros). For a good while now—possibly some years—I've been wanting to some extent replicate Ryoji Ikeda's installations (you can query YouTube about those) in realtime. I started to seriously think about it after last Assembly, since it occurred to me current hardware should be more than sufficient for very simple path tracing. You'd essentially just need two infinite planes minimum to execute the concept. Other GI algorithms could maybe work too, but they have their own shortcomings and path tracing is by far the most compact to implement.

Basically I just wanted a cool little lightshow with a twist that's only now starting to be possible; and 4k should be just perfect size for it. And yeah, I knew I couldn't be the only one to think of this (hi ferris) so better just take a whack at it asap and hope everything works out. I'm still in awe of the response to this...

Also: Ryoji Ikeda came to my mind as the source of inspiration, but I was like: "naaah, who the hell ever heard about this guy anyway" (I had a pleasure to watch/listen to his "Superposition" couple of years ago when in Paris). It looks like I was sooo wroooong :D

Congratulations. I would say you set the bar for the 4Ks as high as Mercury & Conspiracy did for 64K in 2016.

perf is also a bit better than expected in 1080p on my gtx 1070; yeah, those grains _really_ make this - watching it big and loud in realtime is so much cooler with the artifacts, and it was just crazy on the bigscreen :)

Quote:

And yeah, I knew I couldn't be the only one to think of this (hi ferris) so better just take a whack at it asap and hope everything works out.

Thanks for the shoutout, but as mentioned on twitter, back when I tried this in 2012 I failed to recognize the potential of just doing it with a really flickery/glitchy/moody style (and we couldn't quite do as many rays either, but that's another thing, hehe). I'm with cupe on this one - the genius here really was to recognize that and pull all of those bits off so god damn well that it becomes _much_ greater than the sum of its parts. It's absolutely stunning :)

Would have liked more scenes/rooms (one sphere against a wall, sometimes two walls, can do only so much) and possibly more 'musical' music (either more complex percussion and/or hints of melody; could start when showing a 2nd room); the tech is put to good use (well explained above) and cutting and framing works well too. So yeah, one of the more memorable 4ks out there. :)

Some of the comments are like, this is good for the size. Why, is there something missing?

I've always been a fan of doing more with less, so if you can make an amazing show with simple static geometry, that's an even better achievement in my book. But if I were to play a devil's advocate, I would imagine the most obvious answer to be, "it lacks actual geometry and scenes". After all it's just a lightshow in what appears to be a square room with a lone sphere; a mix carried mostly by its direction and audiovisual design.

However, I think this demo works as well as it does precisely because the geometry is so simple. Eos & Alcatraz's entry (that, in my opinion, also deserved a higher placing) also used amazing tech, and went for (comparatively) far more complex scenes and geometry. Yet it was obvious even to me, a non-coder, that this exact decision restricted them in what they could do with it and forced the glacial pacing and a boring soundtrack that cost it a potential #1 spot. It engaged the tech enthusiasts who knew how these things were (or could be) done but failed to engage the audience in general in the way the other top-3 prods had. Noby's hands, in contrast, weren't tied remotely as badly, so he had the freedom to realize his artistic vision (almost) without the tech being an obstacle. I'm not even sure this prod would have been better as an 8k (unlike almost any other!) because I can't imagine how you'd possibly improve upon such an elegant concept without overburdening it with details or introducing extra performance hogs that would make it unwatchable.

That being said, is anyone doing a HQ video capture of Absolute Territory? I'll make one myself eventually if no-one does, but would like to avoid a multiplication of effort if possible. :)

828 vibes in 4k. I just wished it had pure glitchy style like in the beginning till the end. Disco colours, rhythm and "proper" music after the intro left a grain of disappointment. But in general it's surely a masterpiece.

my fav of the whole party. simple idea, extremely stylish, never boring and good music. would have rocked even as 20mb demo. but 4k? wtf?! for me the whole package you delivered with this prod is next level. very very nice!

In contrast to some of the previous commenters: More high pitched sine waves please, even if only for that tangible, liberating feeling when they stop :)

Apart from that I concur with most people here: The most successful intros are successful because they manage to hit a sweet spot, a local maximum of what's possible and how to present it in a consistent, thought out way embracing the limitations and converting them into style, and you hit the 2017 version of that sweet spot perfectly. If this doesn't climb to the absolute top of 4k intros soon, blame the scene for not embracing the gritty industrial style as much as past more easily consumable offerings :)

It's not. The rendering MAY be, but in 4k technical complexity doesn't only come from the visuals, it also comes from how much content is presented and how - it's a case where the extreme limitation makes artistic achievements technically impressive by definition. The fact that this has proper bang-on surgically precise direction and sound design WITH good rendering all somehow squeezed into 4k is what makes it impressive, not the fact that "it looks nice".

The shocking thing about this is how consistently good this is all across the disciplines, not just really really good in one specific thing.

And now I can post . . . the sync, the color choices, and the use of light, all blew me away. This is such a beautiful, crisp, perfectly produced demo. The graphic design of it was tremendously satisfying.

Alright a word about the high pitched sines. First of all, I'm genuinely sorry if you felt uncomfortable due to them, during the compo or otherwise on your own. I have suffered from tinnitus since a child and am very familiar with the discomfort it can cause, though then again my hearing might also be more accustomed to this.

But with that said, there are genuine artistic reasons why they had to be there. One thing is intertextuality with Ikeda's work, which commonly employs similar motifs between the visuals and audio (note especially the light animation and the beating in the audio).

The second is to simulate the very same ringing effect caused sometimes by a loud sound, in this case the boom. I feel this is a common effect used in film media, albeit many professional productions probably place more emphasis on listener comfort.

In any case I tried to make it as tolerable as possibly without letting the effect be diminished (and let it be known they were a lot more abrasive originally). In the end what kb said pretty well describes the intended effect. I tried to find a good middle ground that didn't feel like a compromise and thought I succeeded, but again sorry if you found the pitches noticeably discomforting.